#25 Last month marked my 20th year as a food blogger

And I still love the creative process, to be honest. But I have to admit that to stay in the game, creativity is no longer enough. These days, you have to beat AI to survive.

It’s been the topic of heated discussions over the past two weeks. Apparently, without our knowledge and permission, Google and MSN, the search engine giants, have been using content that web publishers have shared over the last two decades to train their AI.

Our words. Our photos. Our videos. All these were used to train AI. Very soon, when you search for something like “how to stir fry”, Google will not give you the usual links to websites that provide information on the topic. Rather, the top of the search results page will be dominated by a colored box that contains AI-generated information. And the links to the websites where the AI got that information will be relegated to the background.

Content theft? Plagiarism? Some other form of copyright infringement? Among my peers, the word “lawsuit” is been bandied about repeatedly. Meanwhile, so many food blogs are being sold by their owners.

What about me? Do I want to continue publishing for the next 20 years? After all this time, I still like the challenge of creating a tasty dish with whatever ingdredients I find in the fridge and pantry, plating my creation, taking photos and writing to publicly share the experience.

So, I guess, the answer is a yes. But it is a qualified yes. I will not fight Google. I will not fight the development of AI. Heck, I want AI to succeed so that the day will come when AI can clean the house, do the dishes and the laundry, water the garden, trim the weeds… That should leave me with more time to do what makes me happy — read and write, cook and take photos, and just be creative.

Don’t I mind that more of my content will be used to train AI? I do. I hate the thought, really. So, I have this idea… to make recipes directly available to readers only in downloadable form — in a format that will make it very hard, if not impossible, for content thieves to replicate my words. It’s just an idea at this point because I still have to find out if Substack, the service that sends this newsletter to your inbox, will be more respectful and protective of the rights of digital content creators like myself.

What’s new in the blog?

Not much. I had been slowing down with the publishing, holding on to new recipes and photos, keeping them safe, until such time when I know exactly how they can be shared without feeding AI more than I already have.

No new recipes in the blog? Just two over the last ten days. They’re both delicious though so go ahead and have a look.

Claypot rice with shimps and dumplings - Soaked rice is cooked in broth, topped with green beans and mushrooms tossed with black beans and chili sauces, store-bought vegetable dumplings and whole shrimps. Get the recipe.

Cabbage and mushroom pancake - A cross between Japanese okonomiyaki and Korean pajeon, shredded cabbage, julienned carrot, sliced mushrooms and scallions are stirred in batter and lightly fried on both sides until a crisp crust forms. Get the recipe.